The study examined all public school students in North Carolina who entered third grade in the 2000-01 and 2004-05 school years.

The study's authors say they found:

If a black male child has a black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade, that child is significantly less likely to drop out of high school.

The impact of having a black teacher is even greater for black male students who are economically disadvantaged, with a 39 percent lower chance the students will drop out.

Being exposed to at least one black teacher in grades 3-5 increases the chances that low-income students, male or female, will attend a four-year college.

The study's authors also make the following suggestions:

Deliberately assigning black male students to black teachers could help close achievement gaps.

Future studies should examine differences in teacher expectations based on ethnicity and whether matching students to teachers of the same ethnicity could impact long-term outcomes such as college completion, employment and earnings.

We looked at TEA data from the 2015-2016 school year to compare the ethnic distribution of teachers with that of students in Houston-area school districts.